Does someone has hacked his-her (I don't know why I put "her" because there is never any lady here...) GH2 ?

I've been very impressed by the footage I saw filmed by an hacked GH2, but trying to find the informations, I have the problem that my english level isnot catching the all picture and I'd like to go "safe". I mean by safe, not a warranty issue but being able to understand step by step the all process clearly.

The hack comes apparently from this guy: Vitaliy Kiselev’s

Tha camera shoots at 176Mbit ! and only with SD extreme.

Footage stands the comparaison with Red and Alexas except in harsh light where the Gh2 still blows and chromatic aberrations. But otherwise, very impressive.

l hacked my GH1 and it worked very well...Vitally is super at this but these are a collaborative work in progress.

The thread you refer to is a series of settings that you write in depending upon which framerate you are interested in...this isnot the hack itself. I will spend some time over the week looking at this.

However I am totally happy with the default GH2 settings for 24P...gorgeous tone and color and yes blow any camera's highlightsand it will bite you...some worse than others.

Hate this self-referral stuff ( I really do ) but the following is GH2:

I hacked mine. It's very easy and safe because you can always revert back to the original firmware. The high bitrates 176/220mb hacks really need good SD cards, with mine it often gave errors. Also they suck up memory (about 1 Gb per minute...) so that wasn't really practical for me. I ended up using teh 66Mb settings which is a good compromise.

Ye thanks a lot...now I have hacked my GH2! Was happy with the stock firmware and will not be able to look at the results for a while due to work schedule.

Bottom line for now...176 MB is a bit unstable ...special cards and 500MB per minute of record timemakes it a no go for me. Trying Chris' 66 MB settings...good compromise on time for record andstability.

New PTool 3.6.3 is great...ini file in same folder and it is a one-click deal. No hassle and againless of a chance to input a bad value.

after so much advertising you´ve made for the GH2 I´m really tempted...I´m not really satisfied with the canon 5DII video skin tones. Does the GH2 support a high def HDMI output when recording? That´s the other downside of the 5DII.

I don't want to deal with that, I'm not an engineer and prefer using the SD extreme with higher bitrate and end of the story. If in the future I really need power, I'd go Red.The GH2 output is good enough for me, in fact clearly much better than the 5D2 in factory (except in extreme isos). IMO going HDMI recording with it is more an hassle than a plus IMO.

fred: did you tried the 5dmk2 with magic lantern fw? it brings up their data rate as well high. not as much as the gh2 but 60 - 80 mbs as well.

No Rainer, I did not try it so far. It's true that since I got the GH2, the 5D2 is starting to get spider webs. I find the panasonic, independently of the output, much more fun to use.So I sort of have a lack of interest in trying to improve the Canon. I think I'm going to sell it to a friend that is interested.

Thank you Fred, this is an additional option, interesting read. What I actually meant was just the connectivity of a 7" on camera display. Whith the 5DII it is great to compose and when you start to take off the resolution slips down and is hard to follow focus. That´s why I considered an additional Canon 7D, but now I´ll take a deeper look at the GH2 first. Tempted by the Red too, but a bit afraid of the huge and heavy camera setup and additional crew needed. Anyway, thanks again.

Caution: do not install the Pana official firware. I had to removed it to the original firmware and then hack.

In higher isos more than 1600 (now enabled no isos limits), instead of the sort of soupish undefined dots you got film grain like.

No need to say that lower isos are impressive and ultra-clean.

Clips less highlights too.

BUT

there are also some downsides, as always.

-1) files are huge. 30 sec in normal gh2 is 50M, with the hacked it's 270MThat means SD cards will be filled in 40ish minutes and storage will be more costly.That's really the biggest problem of the powerfull hacks.I think I may reduced to a lower bit-rate and find a comnpromise because the workflow will be slower or I'd need soon a proper server installation.

-2) from 6400 isos and above, in some parts of the footage, not always, ( I've noticed that it shows-up in underexposure cases), appears a "banding". Not quite the same as the banding causes by electrical frequency, just one or 2 fixed bands.It does not appears at lower isos than 6400. Even at 6400, this banding disappear immediatly if you expose more. So it's only in under-exposures and not always. Weired.and I wonder what could it be.

The banding I was talking about at higher isos seems to affect almost all the GH2 units worldwide.

But I've noticed a sighnificant improvement when reducing by 1/2 shutter speed and film at 25 instead of 50. (and of course compensating on aperture to get the same amount of light)That makes no sense but it works quite well and only on extreme under-exposed area it would show-up again but way more discrete.

720p and 1080i 1/50 are banding free, at least on my unit.

So it seems to affect the Cine mode only.

Nota: again, this got nothing to do with the light frequency banding. I'm talking about scenes where no artificial light at all is involved.

The GH2 seems to have a weired behaviour with higher isos-shutter-spend and for what is circulating over the internet, it's a conception engineering fact on this camera.

For me it's not a prob at all. I can live with it and rarely use 3200-6400 isos. If I have to I'd swich to 1080i for extreme isos.